Their Generation

My son showed me this, which is “Shelter Song” by Temples. The music and the video pretty obviously show that the band was trying to sound like a band from the late 1960s. They succeeded.

It’s interesting. When I was a kid, my parents’ music was Harry James and Frank Sinatra. We, of course, were all about Led Zeppelin and The Stones. The music of today, however, is similar enough to the music of 50 years ago that a band can do what in essence is a perfect recreation. I don’t remember The Rolling Stones doing “In the Mood.” (There are exceptions, of course.)

I think the emergence of rock and roll was a definite break point, a before and after in American music. It all happened pretty close to the end of World War II — ten years, more or less — so the roots of the changes can probably be traced back to the war.